Church Fathers Archives - Page 3 of 3 - All Saints Anglican Church, Charlottesville VA

December 29, 2011 By Fr. Spencer

The Bride of Christ II

A Bride, A Mother, A Home and a Hearth

According to the Church Fathers one can only have God as Father by having the Church as Mother. As our Mother she makes a home for us, which, by the grace of God, is “a haven of blessing and of peace (BCP 303).” Holy Mother Church has received gifts and grace from God for the realization of her vocation. She is to preserve and administer those means of grace to her children for their health and wholeness. The greatest of these gifts are the Holy Scriptures and the Sacraments. She is obliged to oversee their use in the right ordering of her household. This is why the old Church Fathers believed there is no salvation outside the Church: Holy Mother Church has custody of the Word of God written and the life-giving Sacraments. They are God-given gifts and privileges intended for the nurturing of her children.

It may be wise for us to exercise some humility on this issue and admit that though we know the Church and her graces given by God to be his sure and certain means of grace, we do not know if and where his grace is entirely absent. We do not know where God’s grace ends. We do not know what we do not know. We do know by God’s own word that the Church is endowed with invisible privileges of grace and it is her mission and glory to be the dispenser of those graces. However if God is of a mind to save people in some manner other than we know to be true and sure, that is strictly his business and not our own. But at the same time we must say that it is the obligation of the Church to proclaim what God has promised. Speculating about possible other means of salvation is not the Church’s mission in the world. When one is on one’s deathbed possibilities or probabilities are cold comfort to say the least.

What we know to be sure is that Holy Mother Church provides a home. She sits with her children gathered around her, the Bible opened upon her lap, and she instructs her offspring in God’s great promises. She also provides a hearth that her children gather around to warm them by the life-giving fire of the Holy Spirit. The home’s hearth used to be representative of the household economy of the family that was under the custody of the Mother. By means of the household economy, understood to include but also in a wider sense than the family budget, the Mother maintained the good order of family life. Fire warmed the family on cold days. Food was prepared at the hearth and the family used to gather there for study, reading, and fellowship. All of this is metaphorical for how Holy Mother Church arranges the common life of her children for their well being which issues in the glory of God. “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.” The means of her holy order are the Gospel Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, as well as the five lesser sacraments of Confirmation, Penance, Holy Orders, Holy Matrimony and Unction. Sacraments and gospel preaching are not mere beliefs, but real means of grace and a way of life that we appropriate by way of the rites and liturgies of the Book of Common Prayer that enable us to worship God Almighty in Spirit and in truth.

December 24, 2011 By Fr. Spencer

Fathers, Preachers and Worthies

From St. John Chrysostom:

I behold a new and wondrous mystery! My ears resound to the Shepherd’s song, piping no soft melody, but chanting full forth a heavenly hymn.

The Angels sing! The Archangels blend their voices in harmony! The Cherubim hymn their joyful praise! The Seraphim exalt His glory!

Bethlehem this day resembles heaven; hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices; and in place of the sun, enfolds within itself on every side the Sun of Justice.

This day He Who Is, is Born; and He Who Is becomes what He was not. For when He was God, He became man; yet not departing from the Godhead that is His. Nor yet by any loss of divinity became He man, nor through increase became he God from man; but being the Word He became flesh, His nature, because of impassibility, remaining unchanged.

From St. Athanasius the Great:

The incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God entered our world. In one sense, indeed, He was not far From it before, for no part of creation had ever been without Him Who, while ever abiding in union with the Father, yet fills all things that are. But now He entered the world in a new way, stooping to our level in His love and Self-revealing to us.

From St. Ephraim the Syrian, Hymns on the Nativity:

He became a servant on earth; He was Lord on high. Inheritor of the height and depth, who became a stranger. But the One who was judged wrongly will judge in truth, and He in Whose face they spat, breathed the spirit into the face. He who held a weak reed was the scepter for the world that grows old and leans on Him. He who stood [and] served His servants, sitting, will be worshipped. He Whom the Scribes scorned — the Seraphim sang “holy” before Him.

From Venerable Bede:

He who sits at the right hand of the Father goes without shelter at the inn, that He may for us prepare many mansions in the house of His heavenly Father… He was born, not in the house of His parents, but at the inn, by the wayside, because through the mystery of the Incarnation He is become the Way, by which He guides us to our home.

From Austin Farrer:

WHEN Mary laid Jesus Christ upon her knees, when she searched him with her eyes, when she fed him at the breast, she did not study to love him because she ought, she loved him because he was dear: he was her Son. His conception had been supernatural, perplexing, affrighting; it had called for faith in the incomprehensible, and obedience beyond the limit of human power. His nativity was human and sweet, and the love with which she embraced it was a natural growth, inseparable from the thing she loved. She was blessed above all creatures, because she loved her Maker inevitably and by simple nature; even though it needed the sword—wounds of the Passion to teach her fully that it was her Maker whom she loved. The Son of Mary is the Son of all human kind; we embrace him with the love of our kind, that we may be led up with Mary to a love beyond kind, a selfless love for the supreme Goodness, when we too shall have climbed the ladder of the cross.